From Conciliation to Conquest

The Sack of Athens and the Court-Martial of Colonel John B. Turchin

Written by George C. Bradley and Richard L. Dahlen

Publication Year: 2006

In the summer of 1862, the U.S. Army court martialed Colonel John B. Turchin, a Russian-born Union officer, for "outrages" committed by his troops in Athens, Alabama. By modern standards, the outrages were minor: stores looted, safes cracked, and homes vandalized. There was one documented act of personal violence, the rape of a young black woman. The pillage of Athens violated a government policy of conciliation; it was hoped that if Southern civilians were treated gently as citizens of the United States, they would soon return their allegiance to the federal government.

By following Turchin to Athens and examining the volunteers who made up his force, the colonel's trial, his subsequent promotion, the policy debate, and the public reaction to the outcome, the authors further illuminate one of the most provocative questions in Civil War studies: how did the policy set forth by President Lincoln evolve from one of conciliation to one far more modern in nature, placing the burden of war on the civilian population of the South?

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

There are many people who deserve credit for helping to create this book, for
without the aid and assistance of the countless archivists, research assistants,
librarians, and scholars who either broke related ground before we began or
who helped us locate, collate, and understand the wealth of material that
came before, this work would never have been done. To any and all who thus ...

Introduction

We, as Americans, have great faith in our form of government, and many of
us take considerable pride in the notion that our nation is nearly unique, our
people dedicated to lofty principles rather than to high and mighty princes.
That pride has at times carried with it a degree of hubris, a conclusion that
other people in other places should embrace our ideas and ideals just as ...

1. The Policy

It was, perhaps, somewhat ironic that the clouds, which had pretty much shut
out the sun over Washington, DC, on the morning of March 4, 1861, cleared
away shortly after noon. Sunlight then fell on the thirty thousand people
standing on the great west lawn of the Capitol as president-elect Abraham
Lincoln stood and strode forward to address the nation. Just how large a ...

2. The Man

Ivan Vasilevitch Turchininoff was born on January 30, 1822, in the Military
Province of the Don Cossacks, between the Black and Caspian seas. His
father served as a major in the Imperial Russian Army, giving him a place,
albeit on a lower rung, in the Russian table of nobility. This, in turn, gave the
son entry into the schools that led to his own commission—not an unusual ...

3. The Men

When Hylan Downs and his friends decided to go off to war, they knew
exactly how they wanted to go about it. As he recalled long after the war had
ended, “a member of our company named Sanders and myself had repeatedly
witnessed the drilling of the Ellsworth Zouaves in the old Garrett Block,
corner of Randolph and State, [and] we decided that we must all join the ...

4. Advanced Basic

A few days before their departure, Turchin met his new commanders. The
¤rst was Stephen A. Hurlbut, who unceremoniously burst into Turchin’s tent
to inform the colonel that he was now under Hurlbut’s command. Hurlbut
was just one month a soldier and already a brigadier general, his apparent
qualifications for the rank having been that he was a northern Illinois lawyer, ...

5. Leadership

At Louisville, Brigadier General William Tecumseh Sherman was about to
succeed to the command of Union forces in central Kentucky when the
Nineteenth and Twenty-fourth Illinois encamped on a defensive line at
Lebanon Junction, thirty-five miles south of the city. However much Turchin
and his men may have wanted to strike hard at organized rebel forces, ...

6. The Orders

A day after accepting Nashville’s surrender, which the Yankees seized without
contest on February 25, 1862, Major General Don Carlos Buell first took
up the question, How should Union troops treat the people of rebel Tennessee?
In General Order No. 13a, issued the very next day, he answered with a
straightforward mandate of conciliation. “We are in arms not for the purpose ...

7. The Campaign

The men of Turchin’s Brigade stepped off in column and marched out of
Nashville on Tuesday, March 18, 1862, having rested quietly there for three
weeks. With the rest of Mitchel’s Third Division, altogether 7,400 strong,
they headed south. The Union army had entered the city, as the University
of Nashville’s chancellor observed, with “[a]ll the air and assumption of a ...

8. Outrage

Turchin’s aide, Lieutenant William B. Curtis, galloped back to report that
the Confederate soldiers were gone from Athens. Curtis had gone forward
around 3:00 a.m., accompanying Kennett’s advance—two hundred troopers
and one artillery piece from Edgarton’s battery. Turchin had ordered Kennett
to strike hard and fast: “[I]f the town held only a cavalry force he was to ...

9. The Nomination

Illinois governor Richard Yates visited the nation’s capital from June 14
through June 21, 1862, accompanied by John Wood, his state’s quartermaster
general. Staying at the National Hotel, they spent time with their senators,
Lyman Trumbull and Orville Hickman Browning, and gained an audience
with the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. The main objective of their trip ...

10. The Indictment [Includes Illustrations]

Don Carlos Buell spent the middle two weeks of June 1862 marching his
men from the area of Corinth, Mississippi, eastward toward Chattanooga.
As had been the case with virtually every prolonged movement of his army,
the advance had the pace of molasses running along a 3 percent grade. Henry
Halleck had ordered Buell to move out on June 9. On June 25 the headquarters ...

11. The Court-Martial

Major General Don Carlos Buell could not have doubted that in James
Abram Garfield he had the right young brigadier to preside over a trial on
these accusations. Garfield, a proven combat leader, had spoken earlier in the
spring publicly affirming his support of conciliation. His keen intellect and
sharp political skills had gained for him a brigadier’s nomination from high ...

12. The Switch

The conflict that had simmered since the war began, pitting Lincoln’s policy
of conciliation against the likes of the widespread and popular demand, echoed
in the Chicago Tribune, that the South be rendered “a desolated, blackened
country” had come to its boiling point. Now, in July 1862, the point of
decision arrived. The army, its ranks being depleted by casualties, disease, and ...

13. Confirmation

With more than four dozen nominations for brigadier pending, careful legislative
management would be needed to bring any of them to the forefront
quickly and successfully so that its message, if one was intended, might be
loudly and clearly conveyed. Normally that job would have fallen to the
chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs and the Militia, Senator ...

14. The Verdict

The promotion of the new class of brigadiers of which John Basil Turchin
was a member represented the close of business for the United States Senate.
On Thursday, July 17, it confirmed the last of those appointments, wrapped
up all of its other business, and adjourned until December, many of the members,
their staffs, and hangers-on catching trains for distant cities and other ...

15. The Conquering Hero

The former colonel, perhaps brigadier, John B. Turchin kicked around Huntsville
for six days before he accepted the fact that he had been cashiered. He
took off his uniform, donned civilian garb, and on August 12 telegraphed his
friends and family in Chicago, telling them that such was the state of affairs.
He would catch a train home the next day, Wednesday, the thirteenth. Four ...

16. Afterward

General Turchin stayed with the army until July 15, 1864, when he returned
home on furlough due to illness and soon after resigned. Until then he continued
to lead and inspire the men who served under him. During an engagement
near Dalton, Georgia, in late February 1864, he “gallantly appeared
and exposed his life on horseback through the thickest of the fight.” ...

Epilogue

There is a danger in bringing men together to fight for a cause. The danger
lies in the risk that the people will volunteer for a cause that is different
than that for which their government seeks their service. If not adequately
trained, if left to fend for themselves, untrained, undisciplined, their own
dark motives can quickly determine the actions they take, especially where ...

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